Tyranid feedback/suggestions

I've played a bunch of the tyranid modes now, so i want to give some feedback on what needs to change to make it more fun.
normal, hard, terminatus

while some people struggle on normal, people more experienced have no trouble beating the lairs, and at least maxing out XP on horde. it'd be good to have a third difficulty for people who really want a challenge. the new mode would ramp up the difficulty but possibly enable veteran classes. in my opinion it makes no sense that there isn't a way to take veterans (or one per team) or (upcoming) elite classes (it should definitely be possible to take terminators and librarians in)- or at least an iron halo in the coop modes. if having them makes it too easy, then just add in another level of difficulty. the hardest level should just continue indefinitely, and have a way to refill ammunition crates when all of them are drained.
the current modes

horde is great, but the best way to win seems to be very campy, sitting back with at least 4 devastators with heavy bolters and camping to farm AP XP and RP, often suiciding on the 10th wave to the hive tyrant. i think a focus on melee should be encouraged, but this would probably involve a bit of tweaking with how melee works, although this is part of a problem with the game.

to make a (possibly sour) comparison, relic's "space marine" makes it fairly easy to attack multiple targets with melee in it's horde mode (and the MP), but because of how the melee seems to perform, it involuntarily launches you forward which is inconvenient, and because it's pretty hard to stagger multiple tyranids with a single strike you often end up getting hit where you really didn't do that much 'wrong'. it should be just as good to take a chainsword and no shield if you constantly attack while backing up to stagger. it's not that i'm particularly bad at using the melee system, but parts of it are still underdeveloped, in my opinion*. an easy way tyranids could be staggered more quickly in a convincing way is to add some sort of quick combo to go along side the standard attacks, in antithesis to the strong attack.

*there is something of a problem in my opinion with the current mechanics for the L+R stun attack, on players, but also against tyranids.

1) in MP as a tac vs melees you can pretty much end a fight really cheaply every time by just stunning as your opponent launches their first attack, meaning every melee has to start each fight with a counter attack to stop getting stunned. that's fine and all, but it'd be nicer if the stun was more of a "slap" or a stagger, knocking over shortly at most, rather than the current drawn out stun.

2) against tyranids, the stun doesn't really seem very effective. it's better to just hide behind your shield and wait for a good moment between attacks rather than to ever use stun at all, especially since stun is usually just utile for counter-stuns. in tyranid mode it should stun targets in an arc in front of you shortly, or push them back in an arc.

it would be good to make it so that meleeing while standing still does not move you forward as it currently does, swings across multiple targets to stagger tyranids, and cannot be long stunned by L+R stun, but only knocked back, but if the player then moves and attacks and is staggered, they will be long stunned instead.

Lair is where most of the opportunities in this game actually are. it's doing well at the moment, but i can see a lot of room for expansion. it has the potential to become this game's campaign mode. if there is still any development time available for coop, i think it should be spent on developing tools and new room objectives for the community to bolt together and make more maps which can be greenlit and QA'd.

public contribution

the best way to get something done is to farm it out to people who'll do it because they like the game. if devs are having trouble making maps at speed, they should open map development up to 'enthusiastic' community members and focus their time on creating assets for the players to create with. at that point a finished project becomes a modular room or a new scripted event trigger and item for people to create with, IE a lictor/ravener room, or the ability to add other races to fight in coop. then rather than just having 'tyranid horde gamma' people could start to tell some sort of story with their map releases.

veteran/elite classes or cosmetics

it'd be nice if there was the option to take veteran classes, and elite classes when they come in tyranid mode. it makes no sense to lock off a bunch of content for no reason, like the iron halo for instance, but also the veteran skins. veteran skins could even just be added without the extra EP.

expanded gear

with a harder mode adding more powerful gear isn't so much of a problem, it can just be locked to tyranids, since tyranids don't complain about being 1hit. example: thunder hammer
warriors and hive tyrants

some time in the future (it's not that important) warriors should be added as beefier opponents than 'gaunts. toxin gaunts aren't really that much more formidable of an opponent than the normal ones, and the tyrant just seems like a vehicle for some reason.

hive tyrants should be nerfed VS anti personnel weapons, but only with weakpoints between it's armour. - it should come with more 'gaunts and they should always swarm closely with it and be AOE buffed by synapses.

Addendum - melee weapons are all basicly the same so it's a choice between chainsword or powerfist

all melee should also be more effective against hive tyrants. it's not a vehicle, come on now.

chainswords and swords both have the same stats, but swords have 20 more pen.

axes are all the same, even the giant gimli-looking axe. it has the same swing damages as the normal axe even though it's like twice the weight, and that's only like 17 more than the sword and chainsword or something, and that particular axe is way slower for some reason. it's only distinguished by stunning more often, by the looks of it.

powermaul is total trash because it's slow and it does less damage than the axe. as far as i'm concerned this weapon is basicly a cop out, "we want to be different from relic so we're not putting the hammer in, have a maul in stead"

master crafted weapons in melee are the only place master crafted isn't total trash for some reason because of the durability. they should remain the same, but the ranged ones should be buffed.

chainsword - should be the fastest weapon, and should get some sort of combo to deal with hordes of enemies, unless every fast weapon gets something like that. the chainsword needs to be substantially better than the narthicanum for apothecary, otherwise there's like, no point in taking it since you can get the blade for narthicanum that takes it up to basically the same as chainsword for 50lp rather than another 200lp.

sword (shoud be a bit slower and more ponderous than the chainsword, which is more desperate in character, it'd be more like an axe is now, but a bit faster with a weaker strong attack.) Judex malorum / auric blade / etc would have a more damaging fast attack but a much weaker strong attack.

As is, but imperial justice and shatterjack should be slower again , but do 250 standard damage. really, each of the 'relic' weapons should have their own gimmick, like the industrial plasma pistol, rather than just being another dumb thing you get to stick in your inventory.

An interesting idea brother, but I was thinking less like standard veteran look and more like tyrannic war apparel.

Click to expand...

well just straight up porting the current models with no modifications is the least effort-intensive thing they could do. there's even a greyed out veteran class button in there already. i think if they add that stuff into PVE it should probably come to the rest of the game. they just need to add more free customization options for people to use, and expand them in the PVE mode.